ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
Synthetic transitions: towards a new synthesis.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 52 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Engineering Basal Cognition: Minimal Genetic Circuits for Habituation, Sensitization, and Massed-Spaced Learning.ACS synthetic biology · 2026Article
- Rethinking governance of synthetic cells.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2026Article
- Eco-Inspired terraform networks emerge from material self-organization.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Bifurcations and phase transitions in the origins of life.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Open problems in synthetic multicellularity.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2024Article
- Synthetic Ecosystems: From the Test Tube to the Biosphere.ACS synthetic biology · 2024Review
- Cooperative control of environmental extremes by artificial intelligent agents.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems.Interface focus · 2024Review
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- Biological Robots: Perspectives on an Emerging Interdisciplinary Field.Soft robotics · 2023Article
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- Darwin's agential materials: evolutionary implications of multiscale competency in developmental biology.Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2023Review
- Unicellular-multicellular evolutionary branching driven by resource limitations.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Evolution of Brains and Computers: The Roads Not Taken.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Novel synthetic biology approaches for developmental systems.Stem cell reports · 2021Review
- Behaviorist approaches to investigating memory and learning: A primer for synthetic biology and bioengineering.Communicative & integrative biology · 2021Review
- Thresholds in Origin of Life Scenarios.iScience · 2020Review
- Thermodynamics of Duplication Thresholds in Synthetic Protocell Systems.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Zipf's Law, unbounded complexity and open-ended evolution.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The evolution of life in our biosphere has been marked by several major innovations. Such major complexity shifts include the origin of cells, genetic codes or multicellularity to the emergence of non-genetic information, language or even consciousness. Understanding the nature and conditions for their rise and success is a major challenge for evolutionary biology. Along with data analysis, phylogenetic studies and dedicated experimental work, theoretical and computational studies are an essential part of this exploration. With the rise of synthetic biology, evolutionary robotics, artificial life and advanced simulations, novel perspectives to these problems have led to a rather interesting scenario, where not only the major transitions can be studied or even reproduced, but even new ones might be potentially identified. In both cases, transitions can be understood in terms of phase transitions, as defined in physics. Such mapping (if correct) would help in defining a general framework to establish a theory of major transitions, both natural and artificial. Here, we review some advances made at the crossroads between statistical physics, artificial life, synthetic biology and evolutionary robotics.This article is part of the themed issue 'The major synthetic evolutionary transitions'.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.